What is unusual – and for the SPD and Olaf Scholz so dangerous – about the Hamburg investigative committee on the Cum-Ex scandal is that the Cologne public prosecutor’s office is investigating at the same time. There are always new findings from their files, which are communicated to the committee members.
This also applies to the discovery of 214,800 euros in cash in a safe deposit box belonging to the Hamburg SPD politician Johannes Kahrs – he is considered a key political figure in the complex affair and is being investigated on suspicion of aiding and abetting tax evasion. So far he has been silent on the origin of the money. Possession of the money itself is not illegal, nor was it seized.
And now it has also become known through a report by the “Hamburger Abendblatt” that Scholz’s official e-mails and calendar entries have also been searched. In 2016, the key year of the Warburg Privatbank cum-ex fraud affair, he was the first mayor of the Hanseatic city.
“The Federal Chancellor first learned of the district court’s decision to search the official e-mail account through a press inquiry on Monday,” a government spokeswoman told the Tagesspiegel.
It is an unusual event, but it also shows that for Scholz, the old affair about fraud involving millions of euros by the Hamburg Warburg Bank and tax refunds from the Hamburg Senate and the tax authorities that initially did not take place is far from over. Regarding the cash found at Kahrs, Scholz said he did not know that Kahrs had kept such a sum of money in a locker.
Scholz has to answer questions from the sub-committee for the second time on August 19th. Scholz has been criticized primarily because he states that he cannot remember the content of his discussions with the Warburg bankers and Kahrs – but he denies any political influence on a tax refund that initially did not take place. In the end, a court in Bonn 2020 finally got the Warburg Bank to pay back 176.5 million euros.
In cum-ex transactions, blocks of shares were pushed back and forth around the dividend date with (cum) and without (ex) a right to a dividend in such a way that capital gains taxes could be refunded multiple times, even though they had only been paid once. It was a de facto betrayal of the state at the expense of meanness.
The financial expert Fabio de Masi (left) puts the cum-ex deals in a nutshell. “It’s like handing in a deposit bottle in the supermarket, then copying the deposit receipt and cashing it in at the supermarket checkout. With the difference that the supermarket checkout is the state and billions are at stake.”
A look back at the case: With the help of Kahrs, among others, Scholz met the bank’s shareholders, Christian Olearius and Max Warburg, around September 7, 2016 and October 26, 2016. It’s about whether you can get 47 million euros to reclaim taxes illegally stolen through the tax ruses before the claim expires – just as it did tens of millions for previous tax years.
Scholz is handed a letter to the tax authorities, in which the bankers describe the actions as lawful and emphasize that the existence of the bank is threatened in the event of a repayment.
On November 9, Scholz is said to have called Olearius and said he could send the letter without further comments to Finance Senator Peter Tschentscher, who will succeed Scholz in the office of First Mayor after his move to Berlin. A few days later, the bank is informed that the 47 million euros will not be reclaimed.
Norbert Hackbusch can hardly keep up with evaluating the newly arriving files. He is chairman of the left in the Hamburg investigative committee, which met for the 35th time on Tuesday.
The CDU and the left wanted to suspend the committee meetings this week and the next, including the Scholz hearing, in order to be able to study the investigation files sent by the Cologne public prosecutor. However, the SPD and the Greens had rejected this.
In an interview with the Tagesspiegel, Hackbusch pointed out that even the auditors at Warburg had said that the money had to be repaid – and he refers to chat messages from the responsible tax officer that have now become known, which after the waiver of the reclaim at the end of 2016 by a ” wrote a devilish plan that worked.
Where does he see the greatest danger for today’s chancellor? “The connection between Kahrs and Scholz was always relatively close. Even if they are not necessarily on the same line,” says Hackbusch, emphasizing that previously unknown details could come out here.
Above all, it’s about Scholz’s credibility, says Hackbusch: “It’s not credible not to be able to remember anything. This new information makes everything around him more exciting.”
There are indications that there may have been other previously unknown meetings. Scholz had only admitted to the previously known meetings in slices and could not remember sensitive questions. That doesn’t suit Olaf Scholz, says Hackbusch. The Warburg banker Olearius finally told Scholz that the bank would go bankrupt if the tax authorities and the Hamburg tax office demanded repayment. “Nobody can tell me that you don’t remember such appointments,” says Hackbusch.
